Can the Black Church Be Reimagined? Harlem First Thinks So

At a time when many churches are grappling with declining attendance, shifting demographics and growing skepticism about organized religion, Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman believes the answer is not to lament what has been lost but to imagine what can still be built.

That vision took its first public step July 19 with the launch of Harlem First, an emerging Christian fellowship that Marshall Turman — theologian, preacher, and Yale University professor — hopes will eventually become Harlem First Baptist Church. 

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Meeting at the Ailey Citigroup Theater at The Ailey School, rather than a traditional sanctuary, the pop-up worship gathering signaled an intentional effort to create a worshiping community where Black culture, scholarship, children, artists and people often marginalized by churches are welcomed as essential participants rather than visitors.

Marshall Turman is well known nationally as a womanist theologian, author and associate professor of theology and African American religion at Yale. Yet she says Harlem First is not centered on a single personality but on a diverse leadership team that has spent years praying, planning and discerning together.

Bringing Back Young People

The team includes longtime ministry partner Rev. C. Anthony Bryant, whom she met nearly two decades ago while they both ser Bved at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Their conversations about worship, ministry and the future of the Black church gradually evolved into a shared vision that became reality after nearly three years of focused planning.

The launch comes as researchers continue documenting declining church participation across the United States, particularly among younger adults. Marshall Turman acknowledges those realities but rejects the notion that younger generations have abandoned faith altogether. Instead, she believes many have left churches where they felt invisible, judged or unheard.

Her response is a church designed around belonging.

The goal is to create a church where children participate in worship rather than being treated as an afterthought, and where diverse leadership is visible from the beginning. Future gatherings will include literature, poetry, dance, music and educational opportunities that connect faith with Black intellectual and cultural life.

Spiritual and Cultural Crossroads

For Marshall Turman, Harlem itself provides the theological backdrop.

She describes the historic neighborhood as a spiritual and cultural crossroads whose struggles and creativity continue to shape Black America and the broader African diaspora. That conviction informs both her preaching and the public witness she hopes Harlem First will embody.

During a recent interview with Word In Black, Marshall Turman discussed the vision behind Harlem First, reaching people beyond traditional church walls, and why she believes this moment calls for renewed Black moral leadership rooted in both scholarship and community. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Word in Black: Do you have a team that has been planning this for a while?

Marshall Turman: Yes, I do. So I call them Team Harlem First. And actually, my kind of right hand, Rev. Charles Anthony Bryant, he and I have been talking about this and praying about this for about three years. We’ve been talking in more focused ways about it. It is remarkable to have seen it come to fruition on this past Sunday.

WIB: Why the Ailey Theater?

Marshall Truman: Launching Harlem First there feels like a full-circle moment for me. To be in a space surrounded by the spirit of my dance ancestors, including my beloved mentor, Judith Jamison — who led the company when I was a young dancer — while delivering a message that I hope was one of healing, revelation and transformation, is so profound.

WIB: We keep hearing that people are not going to church. How do you attract young people especially, but new people to church?

Marshall Turman: One of the things that Harlem First wants to be intentional about is making sure everybody belongs. They have to be a part of that worship experience. They have to know that their voice as children matters to the growth of the body. I want everyone to know that they are welcome, that God sees them, that we see them, and that their voice matters.

WIB: What do you hope grabs people who come to your service, especially those who may not be church people?

Marshall Turman: I think it will feel different to have a millennial woman at the pulpit. I’m a progressive theologian. I am a womanist theologian. So I’m thinking constantly at the intersection of religion and race and gender and class and sexuality in ways that I think are more liberating than we typically experience in our more traditional churches. I really am seeking to do an inclusive work that I believe emerges from how I understand Jesus. Jesus is an inclusivity.

WIB: How is your preaching voice enhanced or affected by your surroundings and this new ministry?

Marshall Turman: I believe that as Harlem goes, Black America goes. And even more than that, as Harlem goes, the Black world goes because of the diasporan intersections and realities that are present in Harlem. 

My sermonic content is always going to be constructed by thinking about the needs of Black people, the needs of oppressed people across the board, and about what I am hearing about how God is responding to that.

WIB: What kind of unique teaching opportunities are you looking forward to in the new church?

Marshall Turman: The church has been the only consistent form of continuing education available to our communities for free. I understand myself as a race woman. Most Black people will never be able to sit in my classroom at Yale. But the church is where I can meet our people and offer them a little bit of what I have to give. I take that very seriously.

Q: And you’d like to add?

Marshall Turman: I do believe there’s a lack of public moral leadership from women in the church in Harlem. It has been a bastion of male leadership for decades and so I am really excited about the possibility of being part of a revitalization of Black moral leadership as it relates to the Harlem pulpit and to bringing the wealth of the Black social gospel back in this moment where we need a prophetic voice that is informed and serious about speaking to the social and political context that affects the lives of our people.

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Q: Will there be dance?

Marshall Turman: Of course. Yes, there will be dance. There will be poetry. There will be music. There will be all of who we are represented in our worship experiences moving forward. But we are at this point in time taking it one step at a time. 

We hope that the people will come and be with us as the vision unfolds.